


He Was A Lonely Ghost

by zjofierose



Series: Sheith Angst Week 2018 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Astral Projection, Depression, M/M, Pre-Slash, but I promise it's there, separated, the Sheith is subtle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 16:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15822657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: "He was a lonely ghost, uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that that you carried on the human heritage." - OrwellShiro is trapped in the astral plane.





	He Was A Lonely Ghost

It's not what he expects being dead to be like.

He's not sure what he expected, to be honest. It's not really something he'd ever given much thought. If pressed, he'd have said he assumed that there was peaceful nothing, and that would be that. No more, no less.

He was right about the peaceful, he guesses. It  _ is  _ peaceful here in the abyss, the deep star-strewn darkness of the astral plane stretching in every direction. 

It's also lonely, boring, and cold. 

Sometimes he wonders if he's really dead, or if he's just trapped. It had taken some time (days? weeks? It's impossible to tell) for him to even come up with the question, because what else could he be, if not dead? His body is gone, that's clear, and he's alone here in the unending starfield. On the other hand, he wonders eventually, if he is dead, what’s he doing here? Why is he trapped in this limbo? Space works in mysterious ways, and the aliens he’s met so far have all been at least a little magic, so it’s hard to rule things out. 

He kills the hope mercilessly, because even if he isn’t technically dead, it’s just semantics. He’s as good as, that much is clear.

It's like being in Galra prison again in a funny way; he was never alone there, but he may as well have been for all the time and communication he had with the other prisoners. The utter lack of control of his surroundings is the same, as is the impending sensation of losing his mind. He starts a routine out of self-defense: there are no alarm clocks, and he doesn't sleep, but he does lose continuity every so often to some sort of hazy unconsciousness, so he begins treating that period as "night". Whenever he comes back to himself, he does calisthenics. They're meaningless, seeing as he doesn't have a body, but it gives him something to focus on. After that, he recites mathematics formulas and proofs, working his way through the times tables and progressing to fractions and matrices. It'll take a long time to get to the actual rocket science he knows at this rate, but he figures he's got nothing but time at this point, so. When he's completed his math, he recites his Japanese, beginning with the singsong childhood rhymes that are some of his earliest memories. It's rusty, but if he concentrates long enough, he can recall words he hasn't used in years, bring up grammatical rules he must have learned as a child, but had never thought about systematically.

It's good, and it helps, but it's never going to be enough.

At some point he realizes that he can hear them, and that changes everything. He loses his mind for a space of time, his entire self focused on trying to find them, trying to reach them. It's fruitless, and he gets nowhere, unable to follow the sounds, to change the landscape that surrounds him in any way. It's  _ maddening _ , the way their voices echo around him, and the worst is when he can hear them fighting, can hear the stress in their voices, the frantic worry that this time might be the last. 

It never is, thank all the gods. Not yet.

He goes back to his routine again, because he has nothing else. Their voices echo, but he's as alone as he ever was. He adds meditation, surrendering himself to the silence of the void. Maybe he'll cross over, he thinks idly, become one with the endless abyss. At this point it'd be preferable, even if it feels like giving up to admit it. He's never done well with enforced idleness, and the frustration of being trapped in limbo is eating away at him. Better peaceful non-existence than indefinite shadows, better loss of self than becoming a vengeful ghost. 

And then he sees them. He's meditating, letting himself fade into the energy that surrounds him, and suddenly he's there, standing in the control room with them. Everything’s overlaid with a faint haze of purple shimmer, but he's there, he’s right  _ there _ . At first he thinks he's hallucinating a memory, that he's just meditated so deeply that he's seeing things, but then he notices the fatigue on Allura's face, and a new scar across the back of Lance's hand. He reacts instantly, running across the room shouting, waving his hands in people's faces, but there's no response. The most he gets is an involuntary shiver from Coran as he passes through the man's arm, regardless of what he does. The team finishes their conversation and leave the room, which dissolves around them, and Shiro is alone again.

He shakes apart in the omnipresent darkness, letting the emotions roll over him again and again, the elation at seeing them, the despair at losing them, the sharp, fragile, delicate hope of ever seeing them again. When he’s done, spent, he collects himself, meditates, and tries again.

It takes time, he’s unclear how much, before he makes it happen a second time, but he’s suddenly thrust into the kitchen at dinner. Still no one sees him, still no one hears him, but in his sheer frustration, he shouts and makes the lights flicker, and  _ oh _ . That’s got some interesting possibilities, at least. It takes more time again for him to be able to appear consistently, or with any regularity, but that doesn’t matter - what does he have but ceaseless, endless time?

He learns.

He takes to looking out for them. No one else is doing it, and he misses them, misses being able to help, to guide, to watch over. He can’t affect much, but he seems able to draw enough energy from the ship to affect little things, just enough to matter.

The oven that Hunk built so he can bake bread has never held a consistent temperature, but if Shiro’s paying attention, he can stabilize it while the loaves bake. He doesn’t catch it every time that it’s in use, but when he does, the delight on Hunk’s face is worth every ounce of effort. Even better is the joy of the rest of the team when they taste the newly baked bread, warm and fresh with Kaltenecker butter on it. Shiro watches them eat, watches the fatigue lift slightly, watches them smile, and feels pleased for the first time he can remember since he died.

Pidge has a habit of staying up to all hours, and it makes her strung out and cranky, and also less efficient, though she’d deny that to her dying day, so Shiro takes to very, very slowly turning down the lights in her quarters until she’s yawning, and then dimming whichever screen she’s looking at until her eyes can’t make it out, so that she ultimately gives up and passes out where she lies. It doesn’t work every time: sometimes she’s too focused, or sometimes she switches devices apropos of nothing, and he has to start the process all over again, but. At least 70% of the time it  _ does  _ work, and a well-rested Pidge begins to bring her A game to everything she touches. Matt would be happy, Shiro thinks, and smiles to himself.

Lance loses things. Everything. All the time. His comm unit. His slippers. His bayard. His pants. Shiro can’t actually affect matter as far as he can tell, just energy, so it takes him a little while to figure out how to help, but eventually he remembers the old hot and cold game, and laughs silently to himself. The next time Lance can’t find his slippers, Shiro brightens the lights and turns up the heat over them, dimming and cooling the rest of the room. It works like a bug zapper on a moth; Lance finds them in under a minute, exclaiming in delight at how warm they are when he slides them onto his feet. It’s a little Pavlovian, the way Shiro takes to guiding Lance around with the use of physical stimulus, shining extra light on where he put things and making it uncomfortable when Lance does things he shouldn’t, but oh well. It’s still a net good, Shiro thinks- Lance is getting better and better at putting things in the same place every time, and he’s even made his bed twice now. Small miracles, Shiro thinks, and focuses the light on Lance’s missing shoe for the umpteenth time.

He saves Keith for last. There’s so little he feels he can do, and it hurts him, deeply, to see Keith the way he is, drawn and determined and angry and scared. Keith wants and needs so little that Shiro can give; Keith takes himself through his days with a brutal efficiency, waking, eating, fighting, and sleeping, taking no time for pleasure or comfort, noticing nothing beyond the team and the missions.

He starts talking to Keith out of sheer desperation. Keith spends his evenings mostly alone, either on the training deck or in his room, and Shiro shadows him. Silence had never been common between them, even though it had always been easy, but Shiro is so, so tired of silence. So he talks. He coaches Keith on his punches, warns him about keeping his stance. He tells him to go to bed when he’s staying up too late, reminds him to eat if he’s accidentally skipping meals. 

The funny thing, Shiro starts to notice, is that it seems to work. In spite of giving no actual indication of hearing him, Keith will adjust his feet if Shiro tells him to widen his stance. He’ll get an odd look on his face, and then go make a sandwich if Shiro suggests that lunch should have been hours ago. 

Shiro begins to talk to him all the time. “You need to get more sleep,” and “I know the food goo is disgusting, but you can’t just live on those chips Pidge bartered for at the space mall”; “the team needs more socializing time and less training time,” and “I know it’s tough, but you’re doing such a good job. I’m so proud of you.” He takes to doing his calisthenics with Keith when he catches him on the training deck, counting out loud in Japanese, and he laughs and laughs at Keith’s look of total consternation when he realizes that he’s been counting his reps in a language he doesn’t actually know. He begins to spend evenings in Keith’s quarters, reading over his shoulder, or telling stories while Keith inspects and cleans his gear.

It’s... fine. It’s fine, until it’s not, and then he curls himself around Keith’s form, willing himself as warm and solid as he can be, brushing his fingers through Keith’s unmoving hair as he cries fretfully in his sleep. He learns to take himself away when his own feelings are too much for him; the panic attack he’d had in Keith’s quarters had made Keith think he was having a mental break, and he never, never wants to be the cause of Keith’s upset ever again.

Sometimes he feels himself fading, feels the drain of all the energy he uses every chance he gets, and sinks into the endless violet-tinged blackness while the stars circle and wheel around him. When he manages to come back, sometimes it’s been minutes; other times days, once weeks. 

It hurts. It hurts, and hurts, like being broken open again and again as he’s pulled away, never able to remain, never able to do more than whisper, coerce, suggest.

“I am a lonely ghost,” he whispers, pressed against Keith in the darkness of the artificial night, “I’m sorry,” he says, “I don’t want to go,” he says, and “I hope you’re keeping warm.”

Keith rolls over, his face drawn taut and sad, and throws an arm through Shiro’s ethereal self. He mumbles one word as Shiro feels himself fading again.

“ _ Stay _ .”  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if this isn't as polished or as complete as I normally try to get things. I'm trying to do this Sheith Angst Week thing, and if I'm going to be posting daily, things just aren't going to be as nice as they maybe could be. I'm going to try not to agonize over that, because one of the things I want to learn to do is write more and faster, instead of getting hung up halfway through something, but I hope you're able to enjoy these little snippets anyway!
> 
> Posted to fill the Sheith Angst Week prompt "Astral Plane", and the Voltron Bingo prompt "Ghost AU"
> 
> Find me on tumblr @zjofierose!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Truth that Nobody Would Ever Hear (the Lonely Ghosts remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19127902) by [arcadenemesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadenemesis/pseuds/arcadenemesis)




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